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Summer is here, and maybe you've already fired up the grill and cooked some burgers in the backyard. But why settle for plain old regular burgers when you could cook your own kinda disgusting-looking ones that are novelties in Asia? (You might need a little squid ink and bamboo charcoal.) Or you could visit Japan and just buy a strangely colored burger from Burger King or McDonald's. Too bad Heinz doesn't make goofy-colored ketchup anymore.

Burger King also has an all black burger in Japan. It comes with black buns, black cheese and a black sauce -- not just black buns like the Darth Vader ("Dark Vador") burger offered by French fast food chain Quick a few years ago. The Kuro ("black") Pearl burger and Kuro Diamond burgers were first introduced in 2012 and have been offered in limited quantities ever since. [url]

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Some folks want to suck out all the marrow of life, but apparently when it comes to fast food, it's much more expedient to just suck all the meat off the bones, grind it up with some other stuff, and fry it until it's a delicious golden brown. Chicken nuggets are popular with kids meals, and there are apparently various patented processes for cutting up chicken meat into innovative products. Here are just a few good nuggets on some fast food chicken items.

What is a chicken nugget made of? An anecdotal analysis finds that some chicken nuggets (not McNuggets) are mostly fat (~56-58%), about 40-50% muscle meat, along with some bone fragments and breading and other bits. (And don't forget the BBQ sauce.) [url]

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Is it still junk food if you make it yourself? If you feel guilty about buying junk food and have lots of time on your hands, here are a few links that might inspire you to try recreating some popular snacks at home.

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Some restaurants guard their recipes as if they were the blueprints for a nuclear bomb. But it's usually not that difficult to reverse-engineer some kind of copycat meal that tastes pretty good, and there are tons of foodies out there with blogs dedicated to replicating all kinds of famous dishes. Here are just some examples of folks giving away the secret recipes for a few fast food favorites.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The USA has no monopoly on hamburger innovations. Sure, Americans probably eat more burgers than any other country, and we came up with the drive-thru and drive-in processes for burger orders. But the possibilities for burgers have no limits, and here are just a few global developments in the world of burger technology.

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We know it's bad for our health, but somehow we just can't get enough of artery-clogging fried foods because they taste so good. If you get tired of dry oven-roasted Thanksgiving turkeys, try deep frying them next time. Deep frying is not only a quicker way to cook a turkey, but it also produces a very moist and juicy bird with super crunchy skin. (However, deep frying whole turkeys is dangerous if not done properly -- take it from William Shatner, who nearly burned down his house trying to deep fry a turkey.) Fried turkey isn't particularly unusual, but there are some pretty crazy, deep fried food ideas out there. Here are a few examples.

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Hamburgers are one of America's best-known foods, and McDonald's has popularized this kind of fast food all over the world. (The Economist even publishes its Big Mac Index to compare national economies according to the price of McD's iconic burgers.) Here are just a few more interesting tidbits with all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions -- all on a sesame seed bun.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Lots of people get married or propose on Valentine's day, and the diamond industry has successfully made its shiny minerals part of the wedding tradition. But can fast food restaurants get into this romantic ritual, too? Here are just a few ways that couples can get hitched --along with a reasonably priced meal.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are a lot of food options out there, and fast food is certainly one of the more popular choices for people on the go. Not surprisingly, though, fast food establishments usually don't have the best reputation for healthy dining, but some of them are trying to change their image. Here are just a few stories on fast food news.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

While there are a lot of debates going around about the wisdom of genetically modified organisms, a bunch of food scientists are working with edible concoctions that aren't GMOs. Traditional breeding of naturally-occurring varieties of fruits and vegetables can still produce some pretty amazing results. And ultimately, consumers are voting with their purchases -- which is creating all kinds of food innovations. Here are just a few examples.